Tapeworm Sushi

Your efforts to get parents or grandparents to try sushi just took a nine-feet-long step backward: A soon-to-be giant tapeworm passed from a delicious piece of undercooked fish to a Chicago man’s stomach, sending him to the hospital and setting back domestic sushi acceptance by about 20 years. Here’s the factoid paragraph from the ABC report:

“Although still rare, a study this June showed salmon tapeworm infestations tripled from an average of 0.32 cases per 100,000 people each year in Kyoto, Japan, to at least to 1 case in 100,000 people in 2008.”

Scare journalism? Perhaps. But, with the questions about mercury contamination and sustainability that plague most domestic sushi, maybe this sort of thing isn’t such a bad reality check on the industry as a whole.